laffite
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Posts posted by laffite
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A Chef in Love
?who turned his head and looked at them in a most amorous manner. The two girls practically choked on their Swiss chard omelets when they saw that he resembled the landlord. The waiter came with the check and he too looked the landlord and the chef and was flush with admiration for the girls. Uh oh, they thought...
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Classic American Story
next: The Finger Points
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Eat Drink Man Woman
?which really took them aback since the meaning was not altogether clear to them and they demurely and perhaps prudently declined to attend the banquet he was hosting that very night opting instead to dine in and contemplate?
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All Through the Night
...offering celestial condolence from above that although they be but mere faces on paper they were nevertheless children of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars and that they had a right to be there and whether or not they knew it or not the universe was unfolding as it should. This did not make them feel any better because they were so damn hungry and someone wondered out loud if Papa John was delivering pizza in their area and that they might have some before their images decomposed along with the paper on which they dwelled. But before anything could happen on that front it began to rain and...
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Ballad of Gregory Cortez
?which he had been singing incessantly driving the multitudes into such a state of torpor that smelling salts were needed to revive them. This is pretty amazing when considering that they were already dead. Or were they? There was a sudden gaiety among the passengers when from above decks it was observed that...
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Adieu Napoleon
...who apologized right off for the weirdness of his first name and even for his last name as as he realized that he was nothing like the real Napoleon though he has suffered from delusions about that but who was now authorized to sanction the document for Wiz if he would use his wizardry to free all the outward bounders and let them all go to Heaven, something that Wiz said was beyond his power without the help of LB Mayer (who was, alas, dead) but that he would think about it if someone would just make a him a cup of hot cocoa. He never got it because the person who prepared it for him thought it looked so good she drank it her self. This put the Wiz in such a hissy fit he expired and all looked at Adieu for satisfaction but who just looked at them and...
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The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit
...who had been the superman of the Establishment until the trampoline accident. Now he was dead and outward bound like all the rest. He put his death under protest because he had a date with his secretary that afternoon and everyone got a big kick out of that one. Suddenly everything went dark on the ship and they all thought, this was it, the time had come for...
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Of Mice and Men
?as well as the souls of the outward bounders. Gidget exuded a air of mystery and soon all were eying her with foreboding. Their spirits began to waver when the ship began to list once again. Was this ship simply outward bound or was it the ship of Hell? Was it going down to the nether land? The uneasiness grew and a man who bore a resemblance to Jack Weston rose and pointed to Jimmy, ?It?s all your fault, you are the evil one,? and soon the company became a mob. ?Wait!,? said Gidget, ??
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The Death Kiss
?so to speak, was evident to all. These two were the interrogators and would hear the reckonings and pleas of the company to decide eternal resting (or not so resting) places. The one was a representative from up there and the other a representative from down there and would vie for souls to populate their respective domains. Jimmy, who was still hiding, didn?t like the looks of these two and sought to devise a plan to divert the ship back to the temporal mode. To do this he enlisted the help of?
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Gaslight
?the crew into thinking that the ship was sinking when actually a large man looking suspiciously like Alfred Hitchcock had slipped on a banana peel and crashed the to the deck causing an equilibrium shift to the ship. Everyone went back to Animal Snap, a child?s card game which required animal sounds and soon it sounded like a menagerie. It wasn?t realized at the moment that this outward bound voyage was nearing end and the final reckoning would be required though it wasn?t exactly certain just how this would take place, until?
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The Dead Girl
?in the saloon, aka Madame, began to shed the negative status of a mere macguffin and began to fashion herself as a legitimate element of the plot declaring that it?s about time macguffins the world over initiate the March of the Million MacGuffins, Alfred Hitchcock be damned, and thereby take a quantum leap in importance to the story. Speaking of whom, the drain swallowed Esther Williams just as it did the blood of Marion Crane, an event that advanced Madame Femme Morte to the status of a leading player of the drama as she now focused her attentions on getting rid of Jimmy as the essential protoganist opening the door for Leading Lady hood, a macguffin-to-star story that would certainly make a movie in its own right. But Jimmy, sensing a threat to his starhood, devised a plan that?
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This is not the BBC but it?s in the same vein. It?s from 1999 with *Ralph Fiennes* and *Liv Tyler* and is based on the classic verse novel of *Alexander Pushkin*.
Only MINOR SPOILERS follow, if that. Anything I say here about the story is known at the beginning or near the beginning and so nothing of importance will be revealed, only a few details that would be reasonably inferred anyway. So please read on.
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Yevgeny Onegin (Ralph Fiennes) is privileged and living in Petersburg. He receives word that his uncle, a gentleman from the countryside, is near death and wants Yevgeny to visit him.
?My uncle, man of firm convictions?
By falling gravely ill, he?s won
A due respect for his afflictions---
The only clever thing he?s done.
May his example profit others;
But God, what deadly boredom, brothers,
To tend a sick man night and day.
Not daring once to steal away?
And, oh, how base to pamper grossly
And entertain the nearly dead,
To fluff the pillows for his head,
And pass him medicines morosely?
While thinking under every sigh:
The devil take you, Uncle. Die!?
So says Yevgeny at the beginning of the Poem by Alexander Pushkin (translated by James E Falen). _There is no poetry in the film_. I?ve chosen a few brief excerpts for here just for fun. As you can see, it?s very readable, not to high-falutin. That is a typical stanza. There are about 330 of those that make up the whole story.
The above tells a lot about Yevgeny. He is not reverent. He?s privileged and living the high life though he is not a happy man. He despises conventions of society and he is bored with life.
The endless round, the varied game;
Tomorrow too will be the same.
?+
Yes, soon he lost a warmth of feeling;
The social buzz became a bore
For all those beauties, once appealing,
Were objects of his thought no more.+
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Once in the countryside he meets Tatyana (Liv Tyler).
It?s amazing how many of these there are, i.e., a peering Tatyana. Is she a busybody, sneaking glances at what she shouldn?t? ? Not at all. What is she looking at? You can probably guess. It?s a nice device because we are getting her point of view. Plus there is something nice in seeing a young and pretty woman in these modest little acts of curious glances.
From early youth she read romances
And novels set her heart aglow;
She loved the fictions and the fancies
Of Richardson and Rousseau
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And speaking of Rousseau?she visits Yevgeny in his library and he gives her a book to read. It?s La Nouvelle Eloise. ?It?s a novel in the form of letters which passed between two lovers,? he says to her.
Yevgeny and Tatyana will write letters of their own.
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And on the floor she?s there a-writing,
Tatyana pictures her Eugene,
And in a letter, rash and green,
Pours forth a maiden?s blameless plighting.
The letter?s ready---all but sent. . .
For whom Tatiana, is it meant?
As if we didn?t know
Notice the scratch outs in the letter (below). She?s writing and freely scratches out a sentence she doesn?t like. She doesn?t do a re-write before sending. A nice detail signaling her passion and desperation.
And now at last the wait has ended;
Her eyes have opened?seen his face!
And now, alas!?she lives attended?
All day, all night, in sleep?s embrace?
By dreams of him; each passing hours
The world itself with magic power
But speaks of him.
Yevgeny will write one of his own to Tatyana.
The poetry seems light in comparison to the tone of the film. There is a certain gravity to the story. Not many events transpire, there is no long and rambling narrative?but each moment is rich and there is a lot of suspense.
Fiennes projects this personality with perfection. He has a grimace and manner that projects the disdain that is Onegin. Liv Tyler is as fresh as a daisy. She plays a provincial girl who nevertheless projects a fine elegance.
The above is a wonderful scene but I am mum. There are couple other important players not mentioned or capped here. I don't want to say much. However, if you've seen this and want to weigh in, please have away. Invoke spoiler alerts if necessary. I really liked this film. You?
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Enchanted April
?and Bill and Suzy perhaps but most were gripped by the fear of the thawing cube and having to watch Esther Williams? movies for all eternity and that if there were another hell they appealed to the ?chosen one? that they would go there and most willingly too. They built a shrine and established prayers and rituals for the worship of The Chosen and even hired an old priest (played by Edgar Buchanan) to give the sermons. O Jimmy, deliver us from Esther, it went and it appeared it might be working until?
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The Greatest Show on Earth
...yes, even that, that is when he is in the proper element, but at the moment he was pulling rabbits out of the hat, metaphorically speaking, as the two celebrated detectives continued to grapple with each others presence and the added mystery of Jimmy the Magician and/or whatever other hat he might be wearing, bedazzling as he was, all the outward bounders who were beginning to think that they may have met their final destinies, being jerked around by an idiot. On deck the fog was thick and visibility nil but that didn't stop the constabularies from apprehending the elusive Mr Jimmy as he grabbed a hapless rabbit (a live metaphor) from seeming nowhere. Soon...
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Along came Jones
?who was just goofy enough to lend a little comic relief but the levity turned to curiosity when Jones mentioned haphazardly that a magician was pulling rabbits out of a hat topside near the pool and at once the assembly repaired to the scene and upon arriving were disabused of any notion that?
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Who needs Google when you've got the Mave! An eye-witness you are...and in more ways than one.
Thanks.
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She is not of this world, pure and simple.
What color are her eyes? In one photo they are dark blue, elsewhere they appear hazel. A cursory google was inconclusive. Where would you go to find that out...definitively.
Edited by: laffite on Feb 1, 2010 10:33 AM
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A Midsummer Night?s Dream
?it seemed so to be, reality and fantasy blurring, the presence of Herlock Sholmes and Hercule Clueless on the same case an indication. You could almost hear their thoughts, this crime scene is not big enough for the two of us, especially when Sholmes was about to declare the whereabouts of Jimmy and Clueless interrupting mais non, main non, Monsieur and all the while someone laughing in the background really enjoying the farce, could it be?? Just then the lights came on and there was Jimmy standing there. ?Ta-dah!? he said and then proceeded to vanish from thin air with a pop, just like in a cartoon. Pandemonium broke out, nobody has seen anything like it. Clueless and Sholmes stared at each other, aghast. Finally...
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Bed of Roses
?and as the number of clues mounted, to that same degree were the posse flummoxed as to their meaning and it was decided to enlist the help of the great detective Herlock Sholmes to unravel the mystery. It just so happened that Sholmes was on board having suffered a substance overdose and was outward bound like all the rest and who was mightily bored as Watson was not around to amuse him with this idiocies. He was summoned to the aviary and within minutes he knew the whereabouts of Jimmy. The posse waited breathlessly for...
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It's a very nice picture. The next time I'm sailin' the high seas I may have to point ships in the direction of---now, what was that island again?
Thanks, Fred, for stopping by with your expertise...
L.
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Freaks
...as they were, they decided to play hide and seek with poor Jimmy being the it guy and Jimmy could hardly breathe and lost consciousness, stifled by a table cloth that still smelled of spaghetti sauce. The posse seized upon the accomplice---the Shanghai Maneuver girl---and negotiated a plea bargain. Tell us where he is and there's more rotgut champagne for you. She jumped at this and pointed to the tablecloth bin whereupon the posse pounced on same only to find...
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>bonjour M. le pirate, The pubicity photos for John Ford's The Hurricane look like colorized black-and-white stills, at least the second one with John Hall is.
Yes, in fact, they didn't even finish it. I believe the top one though---the one I referred to---was shot in color, possibly with Kodachrome film (not Technicolor, of course). It looks to refined for the colorization process.
EDITED TO ADD: This photo was brought up some time ago in another thread and I believe they were discussing various kinds of old Kodak film stocks. That is what's leading me to believe that it is not colorized, not that I have any expertise in the matter, though I do think that the photo looks good. I may summon one of the participants of that discussion to have a look. I would like to know.
Edited by: laffite on Jan 29, 2010 11:00 AM
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The Good German
?girl of Dusseldorf? quickly reverting to English lest a spy should chance upon the scene. He realized that she was dead. The police were summoned and arrested Jimmy for murder and the now-drunk-on-rotgut Shanghai (having now replaced Heimlich) Maneuver lady as an accomplice. Things looked grim for the pair until the intervention of?
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Jackie, thank you for the Joan the blonde photo.
The picture with all the ladies with the lei(s) has wonderful color (Technicolor?)
Movies are the answer
in Games and Trivia
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A Man for All Season-
...-ings who was in charge of the spices and seeing the two cute girls began to eye them which made the sisters very nervous and was wondering why everyone seemed to be looking at them this way, then they realized that...